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UK to Accept Stablecoins as Form of Payment, Plans to Mint NFT by this Summer
The UK announced on Monday to accept stablecoins as a valid form of payment and has set plans to make Britain a global hub for crypto-asset technology and investment.
The government plans to regulate stablecoins to pave a way for their use in the UK as a legal form of payment and also create conditions for stablecoins issuers and service providers to operate and invest in the UK, the official website of the UK government said.
The announcements come as a part of measures taken by the government to turn the UK into a global hub for crypto-assets technology and investment.
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak said: "It’s my ambition to make the UK a global hub for crypto-asset technology, and the measures we’ve outlined today will help to ensure firms can invest, innovate and scale up in this country."
Stablecoins are crypto-assets intended to maintain a stable value as it is typically pegged to a fiat currency such as the dollar.
"With appropriate regulation, they (stablecoins) could provide a more efficient means of payment and widen consumer choice," the website said. Read More
DeFi can breathe new life into traditional assets
The real changes in the financial world are starting with combining DeFi and CeFi, which is paving the way to mainstream crypto adoption.
Traditional finance experts are warming up to the idea of crypto, but outlandish headlines of record-breaking hacks and overhyped projects don’t necessarily reverse its bad rap. Unfortunately, we’ve seen the total value locked in decentralized finance (DeFi) recently nosedive, which isn’t exactly helpful in changing skeptic’s minds.
While crypto is much more than its lows, those in the centralized finance (CeFi) space aren’t necessarily jumping to accept this idea at face value. To alleviate their qualms, projects should integrate tried and true CeFi qualities with more novel practices. This will allow neophytes to dip their toes in the DeFi world as a trial run — and expand the usability of the financial instruments to a whole new level. Read More
How David Chaum Went From Inventing Digital Cash to Pioneering Digital Privacy
True privacy protection will set people free and secure democracy, says the inventor of eCash and the quantum-resistant, privacy-preserving blockchain xx network.
It all started in a hot tub at the University of California, Berkeley at the tail end of the 1970s—that’s where David Chaum, cryptography pioneer, and eCash creator, came upon the idea for his Masters thesis, he told Decrypt on a recent call from Los Angeles.
It was a vibrant period at the university. “My officemate was Eric Schmidt, and Bill Joy was down the hall,” he says; the two went on to found, respectively, Google and Sun Microsystems, which helped shape industry perceptions of open computing.
Chaum can’t say whether it was the potent company, the hot tub surrounded by redwoods, but it led him to a Eureka moment; the “sense that this cryptography stuff was extremely powerful.”
The next forty years has seen him break through all manner of barriers to demonstrate his conviction, culminating with the creation of the quantum-resistant, privacy-preserving blockchain, xx network. Read More
BlockchainCom Launches Asset Management Service for Institutional Investors, HNIs, Family Offices
Famous for wallet and trading exchange services, BlockchainCom raised fresh funding last week at $14 billion in valuation.
BlockchainCom launched an asset management service, BCAM, on Wednesday. The new business arm has been created in partnership with Altis Partners, an investment management company with a focus on futures portfolios.
The new asset management brand will target “institutional investors, family offices, and high-net-worth individuals,” said a media report.
One of the products that BCAM plans to offer is tracking the “price of bitcoin versus the dollar.”
As per the arrangement, Altis Partners will leverage its strengths in futures investment management, while BlockchainCom will bring the rest of the resources for the new venture. It will also provide “algorithm-based risk-managed exposure” to reduce the volatility of investing in bitcoin.
Terming the asset management service “a big opportunity,” Charles McGarraugh, Chief Strategy Officer at BlockchainCom, said the company is trying to focus on institutional business through BCAM. Read More
We have a lot to be grateful for within Markethive. It’s like stepping out of the rat race into an oasis of humanity at its best. As an inbound marketing, business-based blockchain platform with an inherent entrepreneurial spirit, we have all the tools to get our message out to the whole world. We have a social media interface with a collaborative ethos rarely experienced on legacy social media.
We are starting to see new integrations in the blogging section in preparation for the customized, more intuitive interface and dashboard of Markethive and, of course, the Markethive Wallet that will facilitate the Merchant accounts for members as well as personal transactions, the Vault, etc.
The new-look Blogcasting Hub is located at the top of all blogs in the system. Blogcasting is a term introduced by Markethive and is an enhanced broadcasting system. In the traditional broadcasting sense, only the people who physically subscribe to your blog or newsletter are usually notified of your updates via email.
With this blogcasting system, your social networks are informed of your blog as and when you publish them. What this means is the potential reach is into the millions. Read More
Litecoin Foundation and AntPool Formed a New Organization Focused on Dapps
By partnering with AntPool, the Litecoin Foundation has established LTC Tabs to get into the decentralized application industry.
Litecoin Foundation, a community-run organization, committed to the development and adoption of Litecoin, announced a partnership with the digital currency mining platform AntPool to form LTC Labs.
The newly established research laboratory will be dedicated to developing anonymous transactions, decentralized applications, Litecoin-based wallets, and other projects within the Litecoin ecosystem.
Also, AntPool promised to donate half of its Litecoin mining earnings each month to support the partnership and fund LTC labs. Read More
Gemini, Chainalysis, and 11 others join Crypto Market Integrity Coalition
The cryptocurrency industry is responding to the best-practices advocacy group’s call for a fair, stable, and regulated market.
The Crypto Market Integrity Coalition, or CMIC, an organization founded two months ago by 17 cryptocurrency exchanges, firms, and industry associations worldwide, announced that 13 new members have joined.
The group is centered around a pledge endorsed by members’ CEOs or chief compliance officers that, among other things, “We will integrate principles that uphold Market Integrity and Market Efficiency into our operations and business strategy.”
The coalition was spearheaded by market surveillance firm Solidus Labs.
“To enable the promise of crypto and DeFi, we must as an industry be vocal about our commitment to address and mitigate the risks,” Solidus Labs vice president of regulatory affairs Kathy Kraninger said in an introductory video. Membership is open to all industry participants. Read More
Robinhood rolls out wallets to 2M waitlisted users, plans to integrate Lightning
The crypto wallet will not support Ethereum-based services like nonfungible tokens and ERC-20 tokens.
Cryptocurrency and stock trading app Robinhood will roll out its digital wallet feature for 2 million additional users.
In a Thursday announcement at the Bitcoin 2022 Conference in Miami, Robinhood chief product officer Aparna Chennapragada said eligible customers who had been on the waitlist for the digital wallet — more than two million people — can now send and receive cryptocurrencies. In addition, the platform is planning to integrate the Bitcoin Lightning Network to reduce the time and cost of transactions as well as their carbon footprint.
According to Robinhood, the crypto wallets will not be available to users in Hawaii, Nevada, or New York “due to local regulations.” The platform had been testing its digital wallet feature since September 2021, completing its first alpha transfer using Dogecoin (DOGE) in November 2021 and launching the beta version for tens of thousands of users in January 2022. Read More
Lightning to strike Shopify merchants with addition of BTC payments
Jack Mallers announced the new integration today at the Bitcoin 2022 conference and hopes to give more people access to what he sees as a better monetary system.
Chicago-based payment application Strike has integrated with global e-commerce giant Shopify so merchants can accept Bitcoin (BTC) payments via the Bitcoin Lightning Network.
The Lightning Network (LN) is a layer-2 scaling solution for Bitcoin designed to facilitate faster and cheaper transactions.
Strike CEO Jack Mallers revealed the new integration on stage at Miami‘s Bitcoin 2022 conference on Thursday. The move could allow Shopify’s almost two million global merchants to accept Bitcoin payments denominated in United States dollar. However, the only merchant partner cited in Strike‘s official release was Warren Lotas, an LA-based streetwear brand, and that site was down at the time of writing.
Shopify is the world’s 18th largest e-commerce company with about $4.6 billion in annual revenue, according to market research site Macrotrends. Its service enables merchants to set up an online store in 175 different countries. Read More
Disclaimer: These articles are provided for informational purposes only. They are not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or any other advice.
